500 Women With Signs ...

I recently saw this in a Phil Hersh article: "*The men's component scores (call them presentation scores if you like) are multiplied by a factor of 1.0, the women's presentation scores by a factor of 0.8."

Why are the women's scores multiplied by a lower factor? Are they trying to keep men's scores higher for some reason?

I am reminded of that old TV commercial, where a woman challenged a man and said, "I can get 500 women here in an hour, all chanting and holding signs ..."

No. I think I heard that after they got the program working one of the first things they did was do a simulated judging of the 2002 Olympics LP, and because his TES came out so high, Tim Goebel won. .8 is the factor needed so that Tim Goebel with 3 quads does not win an event due to the fact his PCS would be low.

Of course the result is that in men's, it is possible to win with quite a flawed skate over a guy with a clean, technically packed program.

Another rationale is that that factor keeps the SP & LP scores in about the right proportion. If so, that's a flawed rationale, because we just don't get 3 quad programs any more.

sarahjane, as far as I know, it's because women's TES is lower than men's. So to keep to PSC in line with the TES, women's PCS are multiplied by a lower factor, otherwise they would get inflated PCS compared to their TES. Of course, with Yuna's or Mao's (in her good days) very high TES, this becomes an exception and actually a problem.